Letter: Nuns deserve fairness, too

Thursday

Jan 16, 2014 at 4:00 AM

Editor:

The Obamacare HHS mandate could fine faith-based charities, hospitals and schools into bankruptcy when they refuse to violate core religious beliefs.

Consider the case of the latest victim of the HHS mandate, the Little Sisters of the Poor. This religious group offers its employees quality, life-affirming health care that does not pay for abortion, inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception.

They asked the courts to exempt them having to pay for insurance plans that would violate their religious beliefs (i.e. abortion drugs that end life in the womb).

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wisely stepped in and ruled the nuns should not have to comply with the mandate until the Supreme Court rules on the issue later this year.

Waiting for an official ruling on the constitutionality of the HHS mandate was not acceptable to the Obama administration.

President Obama sounded the alarm at the Justice Department and they are trying to overturn Sotomayor's delay so they can immediately start imposing massive fines on the Little Sister of the Poor. The fines for offering quality life-affirming health care could be as high as $36,500 per employee, per year.

President Obama may be going after The Sisters, however, he is treating all kinds of other groups very differently.

For example, if businesses with 50 or more employees eliminate coverage altogether during 2014 they are fined ... nothing at all.

Please contact President Obama and Sen. Sherrod Brown and attempt to convince them that religious institutions should be treated fairly in the USA